the first to
clear the thing up. That's it, isn't it?"

"I wonder who this other Mrs. Norman is; did you find out?"

"No."

"She's not Catherine, at any rate; I, for one, shall go home with
a lighter heart." He took his brother's arm, to return to the other
platform. "Do you know, Randal, I was almost afraid that Catherine was
the woman. The devil take the thing, and the people who write in it!"

He snatched a newspaper out of his pocket as he spoke--tore it in
half--and threw it away. "Malcolm meant well, poor fellow," he said,
referring to the old servant, "but he made a miserable man of me for all
that."

Not satisfied with gossip in private, the greedy public appetite devours
gossip in print, and wants more of it than any one editor can supply.
Randal picked up the torn newspaper. It was not the newspaper which he
had bought at the station. Herbert had been reading a rival journal,
devoted to the interests of Society--in which the report of Mrs.
Norman's marriage was repeated, with this difference, that it boldly
alluded to Captain Bennydeck by name. "Did Malcolm give you this?"
Randal asked.

"Yes; he and the servant next door subscribe to take it in; and Malcolm
thought it might amuse me. It drove me out of the house and into
the railway. If it had driven me out of mind, I shouldn't have been
surprised."

"Gently, Herbert! Supposing the report had been true--?"

"After what you have told me, why should I suppose anything of the
sort?"

"Don't be angry; and do pray remember that the Divorce allows you and
Catherine to marry again, if you like."

Herbert became more unreasonable than ever. "If Catherine does think of
marrying again," he said, "the man will have to reckon first with me.
But that is not the point. You seem to have forgotten that the woman at
Buck's Hotel is described as a Widow. The bare doubt that my divorced
wife might be the woman was bad enough--but what I wanted to find out
was how she had passed off her false pretense on our child. _That_ was
what maddened me! No more of it now. Have you seen Catherine lately?"

"Not lately."

"I suppose she is as handsome as ever. When will you ask her to let me
see Kitty?"

"Leave that to me," was the one reply which Randal could venture to make
at the moment.

The serious embarrassments that surrounded him were thickening fast. His
natural frank nature urged him to undeceive Herbert. If he followed his
inclinations, in the near neighborhoo